I bet I know more about Cookstown than you. Having some well-loved relatives in the locale, I have often visited the Tyrone town known – in reference to a locally produced sausage – for a certain irrepressible “sizzle”.
It seems an agreeable enough place. You certainly wouldn't argue that it is less jolly than any neighbouring drumlin. Yet, if a recent survey is to be credited, Cookstown has the quality of a haunted village from an unpublished Stephen King novel.
While the grim-faced burghers slope about beneath metaphorical clouds of despair (not to mention literal clouds of water vapour), the rest of Northern Ireland wears papier-mâché heads while dancing to the sounds of mariachi bands.
Conspicuous bafflement
The United Kingdom’s Office of National Statistics has, to conspicuous bafflement, named Northern Ireland as the happiest part of that nation. Adding to the report’s newsworthiness, it simultaneously identified Cookstown as the second most anxious place in the UK (after the London borough of Hackney).
We don't want to add to Cookstown's rampaging worries by pondering them too closely in a national newspaper. So, let us move on to consider this bewildering triumph for the northeastern counties. Is it time to drag out that Winston Churchill quote? I think it is.
“As the deluge subsides and the waters fall short, we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again,” the future prime minster said in the wake of the first World War.
Churchill was making a comment about the apparent intractability of Ulster’s political problems. It cannot, however, be denied that the quote also gets at the character of the place. One can imagine a contemporary commentator saying something similar about the “mosques and synagogues” of the Middle East, but it seems unlikely that the word “dreary” would find itself in any such meditation.
The nationalist community likes to see itself as less sombre and puritanical than neighbouring unionists. Those medieval theologians who considered angels on the head of a pin would have greatly enjoyed such distinctions.
Frown enthusiasts
On the one side we have pinch-mouthed, unflinching frown enthusiasts such as Peter Robinson, Edwin Poots and Nigel Dodds. On the other, we have supernovae of good humour such as Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly. We do not have the makings of Mardi Gras here.
Even sun-haters such as your current correspondent will admit that the weather in Northern Ireland is less balmy than that in Brighton or Bristol. There are nice things to look at in Belfast and Derry (give me a minute, give me a minute), but there’s not much to compare with the British Museum, Tate Modern or Edinburgh Castle.
Okay there is some top-notch scenery: the Giant’s Causeway, the lakes of Fermanagh, one side of Carlingford Lough. But England has the Lake District and, according to this fascinating survey, Barrow-in-Furness, on the edges of that beautiful national park, is the single most miserable place in the United Kingdom.
Prided on misery
We are letting ourselves down before the world here. It’s not just that Northern Ireland has its share of miseries. We have, as a semi-people, actively prided ourselves on our distaste for uninhibited high spirits. Our most celebrated rock musician, Van Morrison, brings whole weather systems of misery onto stage with him.
The Germans have their reliable timetables. The Italians have their flamboyant style. The French have that filthy food they seem to think so wonderful. We have an unbeatable capacity for seeing the glass as being half full of potentially apocalyptic liquid poisons.
Noting that Northern Ireland had the highest levels of unemployment in the UK, Dawn Snape, the report’s baffled author, speculated that the results may be down to “how life is going there now compared with 15 years ago.”
She has a point. But there's more to it than that. After centuries of bad weather, poor community relations and awful showbands, we have come to embrace everyday misery and commonplace catastrophe. We wouldn't know what to do with a Mediterranean climate. We view politicians who smile too much with enormous suspicion. To quote the Jesus and Mary Chain, we’re happy when it rains. Though not in Cookstown apparently.
Hands off our statesmen
There has been much kerfuffle about
[ Emma Watson’s speech to the UNOpens in new window ]
last week. With depressing inevitability, various slope-headed examples of Peking Man appeared online to berate the movie star for daring to argue in favour of feminism.
The Daily Mail used the opportunity to assess the loveliness of her outfit. Such idiocies will not be entertained. But we are still going to take issue with the star of Harry Potter.
In the course of her speech, Ms Watson made reference to the “English statesman Edmund Burke”. Hang on! Edmund was born and raised in Dublin. That’s his statue outside Trinity College Dublin. Get your own 18th-century political theorist, Hermione.